Bees Know Zero
Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): Canadian Science (Medium)
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/06/10
Science Magazine reported on one of the important and foundational concepts in the human mathematical arsenal comes in the form “0” or zero; based on the newest research, some experiments indicate bees understand the concept or idea of zero.
The idea of zero relates to the concept of nothing, nada, and zilch. However, what about the intuitive idea of nothing or zero?
Something at the base of the mathematical conceptual universe for human beings. Zero exists for other organisms, not in symbolic representation but in internal processing
Others in previous research have been monkeys and parrots. Now, bees joined the pack, or the hive as it were.
Honey bees know 1, 2, 3, and 4. These bees can count. This may help in territorial marking. An adaptive evolutionary function for better survival. Imagine not marking anything then functioning in daily life. No mental map, yikes!
The recent research extended the previous scientific initiatives into the world of zilch, littler than little nothing.
The research team trained 10 bees to identify the smaller amount of two numbers. In a series of trials, insects were shown two pictures. One with some black shapes and a white background. When bees flew to those with the smaller number of the shapes, they were given a “delicious sugar water.”
If they went to the one with the larger number, they were punished with the worst of the worst, quinine. “Once the bees had learned to consistently make the correct choice, the researchers gave them a new option: a white background containing no shapes at all,” the article explained.
Even with never seeing an empty picture, they chose this option 64% of the time rather than those pictures with 2 or 3 shapes on them (with a white background). The article concluded, “This suggests that the insects understood that “zero” is less than two or three. And they weren’t just going for the empty picture because it was new and interesting: Another group of bees trained to always choose the larger number tended to pick the nonzero image in this test.”
License
In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightjournal.com.
Copyright
© Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing 2012-2022. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors co-copyright their material and may disseminate for their independent purposes.
In-Sight Publishing 
Comments are closed.